It’s hard to change behaviours in the long-term.
Short-term’s easy enough. But make a permanent shift? Not so easy…
(Ask anyone who’s spent years yo-yo dieting!)
But one of my most important jobs is to do just that – to help my customers permanently improve their comms or sales.
And my favourite technique to achieve this?
Ask them the same question
As in – consistently, relentlessly, every-time-I-see-them, boringly ask them the exact same question.
For example, one customer wants to help her team love work.
So every time I see her, I ask her “What have you done today to help your team love work more?”
The first 1-2 times I asked, she didn’t have a good answer to it.
But because I’ve asked it every chat for weeks, she knows it’s coming. So she knows she needs an answer for it.
So she knows that, before we meet, she has to do something to help her team love work, or she won’t have an answer for me.
The result: her team love work more than ever before.
I love this approach.
I love that it leads to permanent improvement.
And I love that her team love their jobs.
Action Point
- Identify something you want to improve at
- Ask someone you respect to relentlessly ask you whether you’ve improved at it
- Keep going until your habits change
- For more tips about habit change, read this